Born:  September 13, 1916 in Wales
Died:  November 23, 1990 of an infection
Education:  Repton- a renowned private school where professors were not impressed by his academic performance; his wealthy mom offered to pay his way to Oxford, but he turned it down and began working instead
Career:  Shell Oil Company in Africa, served as a fighter pilot for a Royal Air Force in Kenya, hosted TV show Way Out, screenwriter and author of adult short stories, children’s books (usually for ages 7-9), and autobiographical descriptions of England and WW II in England and United States
Family:  Harald and Sofie Dahl (parents), actress Patricia Neal (wife), Olivia, Tessa, Theo, and Ophelia (children)
Hobbies:  Storytelling, breeding and racing greyhounds, gardening, and collecting wines, antiques, and paintings
Life:  crashed his plane and suffered serious head injuries-transferred to Washington D.C. where he first began writing with a short story about his crash in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941:  A Piece of Cake (his first writing experience took place in America, so he had all of his books initially published in America, even if he was in the England when he wrote them) -1st fiction book “The Gremlins” (first to use word gremlin in print-it described tiny people that caused plane malfunctions)-Eleanor Roosevelt read this book to her grandchildren and loved it-invited him to dinner at White House and he became friends with FDR and spent time with him at Hyde Park (President’s country house)
Purpose of Writing:  Dahl’s purpose of writing was “to encourage them [children] to develop a love of books”(CLR, vol. 41,p 5)-began making up his children’s stories as bedtime stories for his kids-they asked for the same ones over and over, so he wrote them down-he based some of his writings on his horrid school experiences-he wrote right up until he died in 1990, “The Vicar of Nibbleswicke” was his final children’s book
Opinion of traditional children’s books:  compared them to “a slice of modern, mass-produced, vitamin-enriched, steam baked bread,” after the “glossy King-size cardboard cover” had been removed (CLR vol. 41, p 2)-typical stories were junk and written strictly for business purposes-thought it dangerous to instill in children’s minds that writers are foolish, so he would tell his kids that the publisher (to avoid giving the author a bad name) was responsible for the junk-complimented long books like “Charlotte’s Web,” by E. B. White, and “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,” by C. S. Lewis, because they weren’t ‘read once and throw away’ books-he recommended these wonderful books for children (as opposed to bread books) because they posses a “rare quality which makes it just as acceptable to the adult who reads it aloud as to the child who listens” (CLR, vol. 41, p 3)
Adult vs. Children’s books:  hard for an adult to write children’s books, particularly at the young read-to-sleep age-more difficult to write a long children’s book than an adult novel-wrote two adult books and humbly said they may be worthless-children’s books make adults uncomfortable because most adults are repulsed by the vulgarity and coarse sense of humor that kids have
Fantasy vs. Educational:  complained about scarcity of fantasy books (full of imagination, making nice children) and the overload of educational books (full of facts, making nasty children)-thought authors should be wise and kind and give kids a break by writing fantasy because they would be reading facts for the rest of their lives
Characteristics of Dahl’s books:  noted for “free-wheeling prose, fast-paced and ingenious plots, sudden turns into the fantastic, dark sensibility, witty, nauseating, cynical, comical”-“usually a matter of absolute good versus consummate evil” and the good guy always wins -his elaborately violent and cruel writing has been called excessive, inappropriate and unethical (CLR, vol. 41, p 1) -he has come under attack many times, but responds that kids favorite parts of books are the most gruesome ones (most controversial books:  “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” for racism and “The Witches” for gender discrimination)-they enjoy the fantasy and they realize that it is only fantasy and not reality-always mixes violence with humor to make kids laugh-addresses bodily functions because kids think it is funny and they like to joke about it (whizzpopping from “The BFG”)-considers humor to be the magic ingredient in children’s books
Screenplays:  “Lamb to the Slaughter” -teleplay (1958), “You Only Live Twice” (1967), “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (1968), “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (1971), “The Night Digger” (1971), “The Lightning Bug” (1971), and “Matilda” (fairly recently)
 
 
 
 
 

 __“King-Size” books- “You can read the whole text to your child in about fifteen minutes, which includes looking at the pictures, and that, almost invariably, is the end of that.  When you have done, you lay the book aside with a distinct feeling that somebody has made a fool out of you and that you have been robbed; so you apologize to your child and turn out the light and slink downstairs to wash away the memory with a glass of whisky and water.” (CLR, Vol. 41, p 2)

__ How did you feel when “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” came under attack?
“It was the first time one of my books came under attack, so I naturally felt surprised.  In retrospect, though, I don’t think it was an unreasonable attack.  In writing the book, I had unwittingly portrayed blacks unfavorably.  I created a group of little fantasy creatures called Oompa-Loompas, and I said they were pygmies from Africa.  I saw them as charming creatures, whereas the white kids in the book were, with the exception of Charlie, most unpleasant.  It didn’t occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist, but it did occur to the NAACP and others.  They pointed out that all of the workers were black.  Although I don’t know of any attempts to censor the book, there was quite an uproar.  After listening to the criticisms, I found myself sympathizing with them, which is why I revised the book.  Instead of portraying the Oompa-Loompas as black pygmies from Africa, I made them pink and said they were from a remote island. (CLR)

__Do you find it more satisfying to write for children or adults?
It’s more rewarding to write for children.  When I’m writing for adults, I’m just trying to entertain them.  But a good children’s book does much more than entertain.  It teaches children the use of words, the joy of playing with language.  Above all, it helps children learn not to be frightened of books.  Once they can get through a book and enjoy it, they realize that books are something that they can cope with.  If they are going to amount to anything in life, they need to be able to handle books.  If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.” (CLR)

__1924- “At the age of eight . . . I was sent away to boarding school in a town called Weston-Super-Mare, on the southwest coast of England.  Those were days of horrors, of fierce discipline, of no talking in the dormitories, no running in the corridors, no untidiness of any sort, no this or that or the other, just rules, rules and still more rules that had to be obeyed.  And the fear of the dreaded cane hung over us like the fear of death all the time.” (SATA)

__“‘Summer term, 1930 (aged 14).  English Composition.  “I have never met a boy who so persistently writes the exact opposite of what he means.  He seems incapable of marshalling his thoughts on paper.’”
“‘Easter term, 1931 (aged 15).  English Composition.  “A persistent muddler.  Vocabulary negligible, sentences mal-constructed.  He reminds me of a camel.’” (SATA)

__December 5, 1960.  “We had a nurse, then, Susan, a good girl, young and cocky.  Pat was making ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ at the time and I was writing James.  I was working in Clifford Odets’ empty apartment, which was directly above ours... Theo was just four months old.  Pat was out shopping, and Susan had Theo in his pram, with tiny Tessa walking beside her, on their way to pick up Olivia from her nursery school.  They were two blocks from home, at the corner of Eighty-second and Madison.  Susan saw the light change, pushed the pram out onto Eighty-second Street, on Madison, and a cab shot past and took the pram right out of her hands.
“Susan dashed across after it.  The pram had flown forty feet through the air and into the side of a bus.  Tessa was left standing alone on the sidewalk.  The police were there within minutes and they rushed them all to the hospital, the four-month-old baby in critical shape, you see, and Tessa and Susan in the back seat of the police car.”
From multiple head injuries, Theo developed hydrocephalus, which required the insertion of a tube or shunt to drain the fluid from his brain to another part of his body.  The makeshift nature of these mechanical devices necessitated eight operations in less than three years.
Dahl contacted a friend and inventor, Stanley Wade, who agreed to try to develop a more competent valve for hydrocephalics.  He served as a liaison and translator between Wade and Kenneth Till, a London neurosurgeon he recruited as consultant. (SATA)

__November, 1962.  Olivia, age seven, died.  “Olivia wouldn’t have died if we’d stayed in New York.  They had the inoculations there, but here in England they were not available then… I knew she had the measles, but I didn’t know at the time that there was such a thing as measles encephalitis…” (SATA)

__Although Theo would never need it himself, the Dahl-Wade Valve was perfected.  Produced by a non-profit organization and selling for less than a third of shunts that worked less well, the valve was used over the world, saving many hundreds of lives and minds.  Dahl cannot recall anything in his life which gave him more pleasure than this invention. (SATA)

__February 17, 1965.  Wife suffered three cerebral hemorrhages.  “At a quarter to seven, the day nurses began arriving to take over from the night nurses.  At seven o’clock, the elevator doors slid open, and they wheeled Pat out upon a bed.  I stood up to look.  And once again, I saw a head swathed in a great turban of white bandages, but this time it was not Theo’s face below the turban, and the eyes were not open.  She was pale and she lay very still.  They took her straight to the Intensive Care Unit.  The neurosurgeon came up.  He looked desperately tired.
The slow and painful recovery of Dahl’s famous wife attracted worldwide attention.

__“…To me, the most important and difficult thing about writing fiction is to find the plot.  Good original plots are very hard to come by.  You never know when a lovely idea is going to flit suddenly into your mind, but by golly, when it does come along, you grab it with both hands and hang on to it tight.  The trick is to write it down at once, otherwise you’ll forget it.  A good plot is like a dream.  If you don’t write down your dream on paper the moment you wake up, chances are you’ll forget it, and it’ll be gone forever.
He once had an idea when driving in the car, but had nothing to write with.  “So I stopped and got out.  The back of the car was covered with dust.  With one finger I wrote in the dust the single word ELEVATOR.  That was enough.  As soon as I got home, I went straight to my workroom and wrote the idea down…” (SATA)